“This woman,” he continued, “was by way of being a domestic martyr. A sort of self-created aureole of glory shone over her head—and one heard the rustle of heavenly palm branches where’er she walked. ‘Pray don’t mind me!’ she would observe, with mournful sweetness, at times when she was most confoundedly in the way—‘I’m so accustomed to take a second, even a third place, that it really doesn’t matter!’ And if she and her belongings had a little difference”—here he hesitated—“such as you and I have been having—she would shed torrents of tears. ‘All my life,’ she would wail, dismally, ‘I’ve done more than my duty to you! Money could not buy such devotion as mine! And this is my reward!’ And on she would go like a flowing stream, the victim to circumstances—the ‘buffer’ of cruel mischance. Men fled from her as from the eye of Medusa, though she was not bad-looking, and had managed to secure a husband.”
“What was her husband like?”
“Oh, he was quite a decent sort of chap—a hard-working, easy-going, scientific man. She had her waves of sentiment, too,—they came rolling over her in the most unexpected places. For example, one morning, having nagged her husband till he put both hands to his head in an effort to keep his trembling scalp in its place, she suddenly altered her tone and asked him if she should bring him the ‘cure-all’ for his corns! There now!—I thought you would laugh!”
She certainly did laugh; a pretty little laugh full of subdued merriment.
“It’s much better to laugh than to cry,” said the Philosopher, sententiously. “Men don’t understand women’s tears. They’re so—so wet and uncomfortable! This Nagger I’m telling you of was always shedding them—a regular water-barrel with the tap forever turned on.”
“How unfeeling you are!” she said, reproachfully. “Poor woman!”
“Poor woman! Poor man, you mean! Think of her husband!—working hard all day and a great part of the night as well—and getting no sympathy in his aims, no touch of interest in his work—nothing but stories of domestic martyrdom nobly endured for duty’s sake, and copious weeping! Now if you were married, you wouldn’t behave like that, would you?”
“No, I shouldn’t!” she replied. “But we women are not all alike, though you men generally think so!”
“Confound it all!” and the Philosopher, suddenly stopped short in his walk, trying to rekindle his pipe. A soft wind played about the vesta he had struck and puffed it out as though in fun. “Can’t get the cursed thing to light anyhow!”
She came close up to him, and held a pair of little hands curved like a couple of shells round the bowl of his briar, while he lit a fresh vesta and made another essay,—this time successfully.